Sing Street: Tender tribute to simplicity of ’80s Irish teens

It swings with enthusiasm and Irish charm and shows what it was like to grow up in Dublin in 1985 and pursue the dream of playing in a high school band.

It’s a tuneful, deeply personal ode where forming a band and winning over the pretty girl are all that matter in a teenager’s life. Director John Carney, the writer-director of Once, returns to the big screen. He has fashioned a feel-good, atmospheric film that uses its young cast to excellent effect. Carney certainly knows music and how it can seep into our lives, an aspect that is reflected in a film that draws upon the director’s own life in Dublin during that era. It’s tender, tough and irresistible.

Conor (newcomer Ferdia Walsh-Peelo) is a sensitive 14-year-old boy who has an awful time at his rough-and-tumble Catholic academy where he is regularly beaten up. His parents are separating and Conor finds solace in listening to bands of the era and practising on his guitar.

He has a stoned, cynical and unemployed older brother, Brendan (Jack Reynor), a failed musician, who schools his young er sibling on the highs and lows of rock ’n roll. After firing up a Cure record, which motivates the young Conor, the teenager decides to recruit a group of fellow souls to join his band. The aim is not so much to play music, but to woo the statuesque 17-year-old Raphina (Lucy Boynton).

The music (original songs which Carney wrote with Gary Clark, former front man of a Scottish band Danny Wilson) is appealing and captures the nuances of the time and the performances are endearing. One hopes this musical-romance receives the applause it deserves.